Perpignan hospital. The cry from the heart of a nurse in intensive care: “It’s exploding!”

A month. It’s been a month since the personnel male nurse of intensive care unit from Perpignan hospital is on strike. An indefinite and silent strike that comes after several years of tensions, growing difficulties, precariousness and a total lack of recognition.

An online petition has also been launched. She had collected, this Friday, nearly 800 signatures. A nurse of hospital Center she confided in News Perpignan. On condition of anonymity, she describes, in despair, a situation that has lasted too long.

News: One month after the strike started, how are you?

Resuscitation nurse at Perpignan hospital: Our mental health is in danger. We were tested by one of our colleagues, and many of us are showing signs of burnout. We all try to do our best, but it’s exploding. Losing a third of a team in the space of a year is huge. It explodes, every day. There are departures, but there are also a lot of work stoppages.

How is this very high turnover managed?

Inf : Today there are a lot of hastily trained newcomers, junior nurses. We the old ones, we arrive and we must present ourselves to the service, which we do not know. And that is every day, the turnover being too high. Basically, we are sixty nurses. Of these sixty usual, between 20 and 25 have left the intensive care unit since the start of the crisis.

What is your daily life like?

Inf : Our daily life is taking care of our patients, watching those of others, continually answering questions from newcomers, spending our time saving all the errors that we happen to see. We do not know how many errors pass between the stitches. There are serious things that we catch up with every day. There is a very complicated mental load to deal with.

I don’t want a member of my family to come for treatment

Serious mistakes …?

Inf : Yes, there are some serious mistakes, but I don’t want to stigmatize anyone. There are, yes. So far, they have had no effect on the patients. All mistakes have been caught up. We do our best with our means. Often, we say to ourselves that we don’t want a pile-up to take place on the highway… And I don’t want a member of my family to come for intensive care at this time.

What are all these departures caused by?

Inf : The majority are departures anticipated by the crisis, the lack of consideration, the schedules, the work-study program, fatigue, the equipment to be managed, the Covid-19 which has made our work much more repetitive than before … Many are left as a liberal, because we do not earn much in the hospital. We don’t do this for the money, but we don’t get any additional recognition. There is great weariness.

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What does your management say?

Inf : We have been received by the director of the hospital in recent days to always make the same demands heard. He belittled us by telling us that this was not the time to go on strike at all, he made us feel guilty. We had our suspenders rolled up like kids. While it is precisely the moment to strike, and I even think it is a little too late. It’s calming down. We should have gone on strike in the middle of the crisis, but there is still our professional conscience. We are here, we are working …

As long as there are names in boxes …

What do you blame your leaders?

Inf : There is no management that is made to keep the right elements, whether it is on our training requests, our salaries … We have nothing else, we have been denied for years a resuscitation bonus. In emergencies, they have a premium, other sectors too. We do this every day, but since we have no exclusive activity, we are not entitled to it. It could be the case, we could have a bonus, but it is at the goodwill of the management. There are certain directorates which do everything to keep their good elements. In Perpignan, this is not the case. As long as there are names in boxes, what’s going on in the service, they don’t care.

We feel that your biggest weight is this lack of consideration …

Inf : Completely … I have another example, that of a colleague who wanted to do 50% in liberal and 50% in the hospital. The hospital preferred to get rid of him and told him to leave, instead of accepting this arrangement. They prefer that we go. This is the typical example that proves that they don’t give a damn about us. What a consideration… There is a big management problem at the Perpignan hospital.

The last drop of water is the elimination from your working time of the quarter-hour relief, the time necessary to transmit patient information to your successors …

Inf : We arrive at the intensive care unit, we don’t know the patients. So either our colleague agrees to work overtime, or we come a little earlier … In total, that represents 3 days of unpaid work over the year and per nurse, or the equivalent of two unpaid positions. And then beyond that, this relief time allowed us to debrief with the new ones, to tell them what is going and what is not. This is the basis of our nursing training. And that time, we don’t have it at all. We do it as quickly as possible, because it is no longer on our working time.

We mount multiple sockets on multiple sockets on multiple sockets to connect machines which, sometimes, are vital.

What are the other major issues?

Inf : Resuscitation rooms are large in principle, with very specific equipment. Today, we work in gynecology rooms, with service syringes that are not at all suitable. When there are emergencies, we are all on top of each other. It is difficult to access the heads of patients, we mount multiple sockets on multiple sockets on multiple sockets to connect machines which, sometimes, are vital. We alerted electrical security, but nothing changes. I don’t know how we haven’t had a fire or a problem so far. It has been going on for two years, nothing has changed. We do not understand, we have subscribed to mediocrity, it has become the norm. We are resigned.

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Who supports you, basically?

Inf : Our local managers do what they can, they agree with us and support us. But it is above that it does not follow. As long as the hospital is running, they have no reason to change things… Working conditions? They don’t care, as long as everything is checked in their little Excel table.

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